History of Hip Hop

I'm not sure how someone has decided it's hip hop's 44th birthday (seems a bit arbitrary to me) but there's a lot of noise at the moment about it. BBC 6 Music are doing a hip hop weekend tomorrow I think and google have also got in the act...

If you peep the intro - hosted by none other than Fab Five Freddy (someone really did put a nice amount of thought into this doodle IMO) - they're using one particular party Kool Herc played as reference point for the anniversary.

I was playing around with this earlier and it's pretty cool overall, esp. the little challenges to unlock additional information. The record selection was interesting, although they might have gone with a few more UBB picks for my money rather than putting Skull Snaps (more of an iconic drumbreak sample, no?), their own google breaks (WTF?) and a couple of Prince Paul joints (always nice to see him getting recognition though) in there..?

The automatic beatmatching was a bit meh, I couldn't figure out how to cue up tracks in order to really double up, backspin or cut them, but overall it's nicely executed and fun. Head and shoulders above most mainstream media's Hip Hop coverage in any case...